Cardiac pacemakers generally provide functions including sensing electrical signals generated by the heart, controlling stimulation of excitable tissues in the heart, sensing the response of the heart to such stimulation, and responding to inadequate or inappropriate stimulus or response (e.g., dysrhythmia) to deliver therapeutic stimuli to the heart. Some pacemakers employ cardiac resynchronization therapy. Some existing cardiac pacemakers also function to communicate with an external programmer device to support a variety of monitoring, diagnostic and configuration functions.
Certain cardiac pacemakers, defibrillators with pacing and/or cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) capabilities, and CRT devices (collectively referred to herein by the term “pacemaker”) include an internal accelerometer for measuring the level of activity of the patient (e.g., movement caused by walking around, or by muscle twitches). Such pacemakers process (e.g., filter) the accelerometer signal to reduce noise interfering with the measurement of the patient's motion-related activity, such as the sounds generated by the heart itself, and then use the processed signals as inputs to one or more algorithms for generating the signals used to control the stimulation of the heart. For example, if the accelerometer indicates that a patient is walking briskly, the pacemaker may stimulate the heart to beat at a faster rate (often subject to an upper rate limit) than when the patient is at rest.
Pacemakers are typically electrically coupled to a patient's heart by a lead system. The lead system may include one or multiple leads that may provide electrical contact with one or multiple chamber of a patient's heart. Some leads may contain an accelerometer at their distal end. When implanted, the accelerometer is located within a patient's heart, and may detect sounds emitted by the heart. Such a scheme may be used, for example, to detect an S1 heart sound (an S1 heart sound is the first sound made by the heart during a cardiac cycle). It is known that an S1 heart sound contains data content related to left ventricular contractility, a characteristic of the heart that reveals the capacity of the myocardium to shorten, and therefore to circulate blood through the body. A pacemaker system such as the one described may measure S1 heart sounds as a means to gather information about the contractility of the patient's heart.
The above-described scheme exhibits certain shortcomings, however. Such a scheme may lead to the use of two accelerometers—an internal accelerometer for use in adjusting the pacing rate during instances of physical exertion by the patient, and an external accelerometer situated in the heart for the purpose of monitoring heart sounds. Disposing an accelerometer on the tip of a lead is costly, and could be avoided if an internal accelerometer could be used to detect heart sounds with a sufficient signal-to-noise ratio to permit extraction of data content related to cardiac performance (such as left ventricular contractility).